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Bad customer services …

There is a new television programme on show recently at Channel 4 called Mary Portas: Secret Shopper. It tackles the customer services that we face daily and in the show, Mary Portas reckon that we have put up enough for the bad customer services and it is time for the British to complain and demand for better services. Well, I am not British and because I am a foreigner living in England, I am more incline to just keeping mum and only voice out my opinion when the service is real bad.

I have since watched two episodes and it kind of really sticks into my mind now. Every time I am in a store to make my purchase, I observe the staffs. True enough, all of my visits to any shops over the last weekend had left me nothing but anger. Well in fact, I had two pleasant encounters. Mee and I went into a Halifax branch to cancel our credit card repayment protection plan. I have had the credit card for years now but I have stopped using it when I found out how the repayment protection plan works. The repayment protection plan will kick in on the 7th of every month on any balance I have in the credit card. However, the date of last payment is at the end of the month. Hence, for the first few months of using the credit card, I got charged for no reason even though it was just a small amount. I must admit that I was lazy to action on it until last Saturday. The staff that served us was very good. She told me the number that I should call and even offered me to use their phone.

Next, we went to a Kwik Fit branch where I had my car’s tyres fitted a few months ago. The tyres look like they are not fitted properly to the rim. When I approached one of the staffs, he was all smiles and after looking at the tyres, he assured me that they were fine and he also mentioned that it was always good to get things checked if unsure.

Now, here come the bad experiences. I booked in my car for a wiring repair. I asked twice whether or not it would be alright to wait in their lounge and twice I was assured that it is fine. Upon arrival, the person at the reception sounded as we were not welcomed. He asked twice whether we really wanted to wait there. Half an hour or so, it was fixed. We went away but went back to the workshop again because one of the tail lights was not working. In the invoice, it clearly stated that all lights were checked. Obviously not. The mechanic came out from the workshop and tried to repair it by the roadside. Instead, he blew the fuse and the brake lights were not working. Few minutes later, he got it working again. The story has yet to end. The driver’s side electric window is not working now and I have to send my car back to them again tomorrow. That will be my last time doing business with them and I will leave them a bad review after tomorrow.

While we were in town, we went to Holland & Barrett. We saw some packaged dried food in the display and went in to check out the price. The items on the shelves looked darker while the ones in the display were lighter in colour as they were produced in different countries. Maybe we were a little bit picky and we went ahead and asked for the display ones. Instead of trying to understand our requests, the cashier pointed the location of the shelves as well as the item’s description above it as if we were illiterate. He went on saying that the display items looked lighter in colour may be due to the lighting and it was very difficult to reach the display items. Well, we are not blind and there were darker ones among the display items as well and the display items were just behind where he stood at the cashier position. We didn’t like it, so we left the store.

The poor customer services were like a plague. In most stores, the queues were just unbelievably long. Adding to that, the staffs were chatting away while serving at the cash till. When you don’t need them, they are always around you asking, ‘Are you alright?’ when you need them, they are nowhere to be found. By the way, we went to Wimpy restaurant for our breakfast the other day. The food was alright, maybe better than McDonald but they charged at a higher price. While eating our breakfast, we were asked three or four times by different servers whether or not the food was alright. How irritating!

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